The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Does anyone have any tips and tricks for cleaning the grill cloth.

My first thought is to lay it down on a towel and carefully use woolite on a sponge and gently agitate and rinse.

Just don't.

These have become so fragile that they just crumble when any attempts to clean them are made. That has been my experience anyway.

I have to agree with Jerry. I tried the Woollite approach with a scrap of cloth from an old ortho grill that wasn't usable anyway and it fell apart.

My Columbia 810 that I've been slowly working on had really dirty cloth on it. I removed the grill and took it outside on a sunny day and used a new soft bristle paint brush and just slowly brushed away at it, applying almost no pressure. The dust and stuff that came flying off that cloth was unbelievable. It looks MUCH better now and that's good enough. A word of caution, though. About two weeks after I did this and had reinstalled the grill and basically hadn't touched it, I noticed a very small tear in the upper left corner that wasn't there before. I can live with it, but I can't help but wonder if even that brushing I did may have caused it. Luckily, the tear is really small and it's right by one of the corners, so I can fix it....eventually.

Sean

Thanks. I'm glad I checked before venturing foreword and ruining the original grill material.

I'm going to have to carefully clean the wood frame with Q-Tips. I'll take my time and be really, really careful.